News and Events

John Hull’s The Sporting Life

Ucross, Wyoming – June 14, 2013 – A new exhibition of sports-themed paintings by John Hull, The Sporting Life, will open at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery on Tuesday, July 2. The show will present approximately 25 paintings focused on baseball, rodeo, horse racing, and football. Some of the paintings were inspired by drawings and watercolors Hull worked on at the Johnson County Fair and Rodeo in Buffalo during August 2012, when he was an artist-in-residence at Ucross Foundation. The exhibition will be on view through September 14..

An artist’s reception will be held in the gallery from 6 – 8 p.m. on July 2 and will also include music by Dave and Tris Munsick. The reception is open to the public at no charge.

An exhibition essay has been written by Mindy N. Besaw, Curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. As she states, “For Wyoming residents especially, Hull’s paintings evoke recognition of the familiar because this could be our town…Hull’s sports-themed series celebrate our shared experiences—specifically the support, camaraderie, and community of local sporting events.”

The exhibition is supported in part by the Wyoming Arts Council, and has also received support from the College of Charleston and the Welch School Galleries at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

John Hull received a B.A. from Yale University in 1977 and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign in 1981. He has exhibited his work nationally since 1981 with solo exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Tatischeff Gallery, and Grace Borgenicht Gallery all in New York City; the J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, KY; and the Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS. He has participated in numerous group shows including exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design, both in New York City; the Butler Museum of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; and National Gallery of New Zealand.

His work may be found in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Israel Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum, the Yellowstone Art Museum, the Greenville County Museum of Art, and Yale University Art Gallery. Hull has received numerous awards, including four National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowships and the Thomas Benedict Clarke Prize for Painting from the National Academy of Design. He has been a resident at the Ucross Foundation several times. He is currently Professor of Painting and Drawing at the College of Charleston.